Basics,
Part 10
National Democracy
In this,
the last part of the CU Basics set, we touch upon the single biggest historic
task of the Communists in the period since the founding of the Communist International (a.k.a. Third
International) in 1919: National Liberation (decolonisation).
In 1920 the
Comintern organised a Congress of the
Peoples of the East. It was the first international anti-colonial
congress. The Comintern recognised Communist Parties in many countries
(including South Africa’s CPSA in 1921). In 1928 the Comintern and the
CPSA adopted the “Black Republic” policy for South Africa, making the CPSA the
first South African party to call for black majority rule. The CPSA was also
the first non-racial party South African in terms of its own membership.
This is
some of our part in the story; but the worldwide story of the past century,
under the impetus of the Communists more than any other single political
component, has been a story of political independence of the former colonies
worldwide. The masses of the world have risen time and again in National
Democratic Revolutions, with the invariable support of the Communists. Our
internationalist duties still continue. Any political education “Basics” series
must mention this.
Ever since
the anti-colonial victories in so many (150-plus) countries, constituting the
vast majority of the population of the globe, that set those countries free from
direct colonial rule, the Imperialist powers have sought to re-impose
themselves by other means.
One who has
made the anti-Imperialist case very well in this regard is the Tanzanian
professor Issa Shivji [pictured], to remind us that it is we freedom-fighters
who are the humanists now, and it is the Imperialists who are the barbarians.
"African Socialism"
From the
time of Eduard Bernstein and his 1899 book “Evolutionary Socialism”, and
Rosa Luxemburg’s 1900 response to Bernstein, “Reform or Revolution?”, the same question
has been put, in one way or another.
In the
history of the struggle for liberation from colonialism in Africa, the
question “Reform or Revolution” was once again put. To sound better and to
deceive the people more easily, false “Socialism” was dressed up as “African
Socialism”, and was widely used as a smokescreen for neo-colonialism from the
dawn of African Independence in the 1950s and 1960s, onwards.
Dr Kwame
Nkrumah spoke out firmly against this false so-called African Socialism more
than forty years ago. See the linked article below. Although Kwame Nkrumah and
his adversary Leopold Senghor are both long gone, yet Nkrumah’s words appear to
carry as much relevant meaning as they did when they were spoken in Cairo in
1967.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-texts: The Struggle for Democracy, Shivji; African Socialism, Nkrumah.
